NOAM CHOMSKY the President, the Pandemic & the Election Interviewed by David Barsamian Oro Valley, AZ 9 October 2020
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NOAM CHOMSKY The President, the Pandemic & the Election Interviewed by David Barsamian Oro Valley, AZ 9 October 2020 Noam Chomsky, by any measure, has led a most extraordinary life. In one index he is ranked as the eighth most cited person in history, right up there with Aristotle, Shakespeare, Marx, Plato and Freud. The legendary MIT professor made major contributions to modern linguistics. In addition to his pioneering work in that field he has been a leading voice for peace and social justice for many decades. He is the author of scores of books, including Global Discontents with David Barsamian. Welcome to the program. from the scientific and medical communities. The New England Journal of Medicine on October 7th has called the Glad to be with you again. regime’s handling of the pandemic “dangerously incompetent.” It has “taken a crisis and turned it into a It’s axiomatic to hear in virtually all media, that the country tragedy. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration is deeply divided and polarized, red and blue. Do you accept has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans that? And iF so, how to overcome it? who obscure the truth and Facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.” In addition to The New England Journal of Well, the country is polarized in a funny sense. A large part Medicine, the Scientific American broke with 175 years of of the country is by international standards centrist, and the tradition by endorsing the Democratic candidate. And The more progressive elements are slightly social democratic. Lancet, the prestigious British journal, called on Americans The other part of the country is way off to the right. So in to make Trump a one-term president. What is your sense of that sense, yes, it’s polarized. The way to overcome what’s going on with the pandemic and Washington’s polarization is to seek common ground and work to response? approach consensus, at least on crucial issues. As to what that common ground should be, it depends on what you Basically, they don’t care. It is pretty astonishing that the would prefer the country to be. If you’re way off to the major U.S. medical journal, The New England Journal of right, the way to overcome it is to work to convince others Medicine, which has been around for over two centuries, for to join you at the extreme right of the spectrum of opinion the first time in its history has taken a stand on an election. in comparable societies. If you have different goals, you’ll ScientiFic American the same, The Lancet did it some act accordingly. months ago. And it is outrageous. In fact, if we look back at the record, it’s even more You were born in 1928, a decade after the misnamed outrageous. It’s worth looking back at the record because Spanish Flu hit the world, causing hundreds of thousands of we are facing the same situation again that we faced in 2003. U.S. deaths and many millions around the globe. I say We’d better understand how this came about if we hope to misnamed because the First reported case was at a U.S. prevent the next one. And the next one could be much military base in Kansas in 1918. As a kid growing up in worse. We’ve been kind of lucky so far. There have been Philadelphia, did people talk about it? Do you have any coronaviruses that are highly contagious but not very lethal, memory oF it? like this one is; that have been highly lethal but not very contagious, like Ebola. The next one, for all we know, might You’re correct. It started in a military base in Kansas, and be highly contagious and highly lethal, and we might be American soldiers going to Europe spread it in Europe and back to something like the Black Death. And it’s very likely then it spread all over. But if somebody were a Trump, they to come. would be calling it the Kansas flu. I was born 10 years later, So let’s just go back for a minute and look at what 1928. I never heard a word about it. I learned about it later, happened with this one, and specifically, what happened when I was looking it up in history books. By 10 years later with Donald Trump and the Republican Party. In 2003, the it had essentially no residue on growing up in the U.S. I SARS epidemic coronavirus was contained, and scientists never ran into anyone who talked about it. told us pretty much what they’re saying now: It’s very likely others will come. We have to be prepared for it. The way Let’s talk about the current pandemic, which has resulted in we have to be prepared for it is to study coronaviruses, work the deaths of now almost 215,000 U.S. and millions of cases, out possible vaccines, put in place response systems so that numbers that are certain to go much higher. The regime in when it comes you will be ready to move. Washington has come under wide criticism, particularly 2 It’s not enough to have the knowledge. Somebody has to Well, when Obama came into office, his first step was to do something with it. And here you have fundamental organize a meeting of the Presidential Science Advisory problems much deeper than Trump. Who is going to pick up Council, which had been set up by the first Bush. He asked the ball and run with it on researching and developing the them to prepare a pandemic preparation program. They background for vaccines? came back with a detailed program. It was implemented. The obvious candidate, the drug companies. They have That lasted until January 2017. Donald Trump came into profits coming out of their ears, huge laboratories, plenty of office. The first days in office, he dismantled the program. resources. But they’re blocked by capitalist logic, which Trump’s major operative principle is to wreck. Anything remains. You don’t put money in something that might that exists that I didn’t do, destroy (and anything I did do is work out a couple years from now, and you certainly don’t the greatest thing in history, as Sean Hannity will confirm). put money in vaccines, which people use once and then You will notice that tells just about everything about his they’re done with. Put your money in things you can make actions. So destroy the pandemic preparation program. profit on tomorrow. That’s capitalist logic. So the drug There were programs of American scientists working companies are out. with Chinese colleagues. Difficult work, dangerous work in Next comes the government. Again, ample resources, caves identifying possible coronaviruses to study them. wonderful laboratories. But they’re blocked by something Trump cancelled it. The Centers for Disease Control in the called neoliberalism, a particularly savage version of U.S. is supposed to be concerned with such things. The first capitalism that was explained to us very frankly 40 years move, defund it. Every single year Trump has been in office ago straight out. The essence of it was produced in a couple he has tried to defund the CDC, as late as the most recent of sentences in Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural Address: one, February of this year, when the Bob Woodward “Government is the problem, not the solution.” Meaning we revelations show he knew that there was a serious pandemic remove decisions from government, which is partially and Americans were going to suffer from it. Budget responsive to populations, and put the decisions in private proposal? Defund the Centers for Disease Control, increase hands, which are totally unaccountable, the corporate funding for the military instead, defund other health-related sector. They will make the decisions. programs. The second contribution was the primary economic guru What happened in January? In late December, China was of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman. About the same time he finding pneumonia-like symptoms of unknown etiology and came out with a famous article on the nature of the reported it to the World Health Organization. Very quickly corporation, highly influential. He said the sole they discovered what it was. By January 10th, Chinese responsibility of a corporation is to enrich itself, to scientists had identified the coronavirus, sequenced the maximize profit for shareholders. And of course that means genome, provided the information to the World Health for management and CEOs. Anything else is wrong. This is Organization and the world. At that point countries noticed not an economic doctrine, it’s an ethical doctrine. It has that the U.S. was singularly unprepared because of Trump’s nothing to do with economics. The economics are malevolence. Nevertheless, it’s a rich country, plenty of straightforward. Corporations are gifts from the public to resources. It could have reacted. It didn’t. In January, people who incorporate. If you want to incorporate, you’re governments that cared about their citizens did react. Many given a gift by the public. The first gift, limited liability. of them had the situation pretty quickly under control. And many other gifts. Now the question is an ethical Take the borders of China. South China is where the question, not an economic one. You have to do something epidemic was the worst. It has a 1400-kilometre border with about these gifts. Milton Friedman says no, you should just Vietnam. No cases in Vietnam. For months there were no maximize shareholder value, and of course that means cases.